Narendra Modi Directly Manipulated by RSS

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[6]COMMENT: Albert Einstein famously observed on the development of the atomic bomb; “Everything has changed except our way of thinking.” Amen! Recent developments in India underscore that truth in a frightening way.

In FTR #795[7], we detailed the historical evolution of the political ascent of Narendra Modi. His political CV is inextricably linked with the operations, development and history of the RSS, political parent[8] to his BJP Party.

The RSS is a Hindu nationalist and fascist party, one of whose alumni assassinated[9] Mahatma Gandhi.

Recent developments have clarified the degree of control and influence that the RSS exerts on Modi.

That control is profound and direct. Most alarmingly, the RSS wants to see India and Pakistan “reunited!” Now how exactly that will be done remains to be seen, given that both are nuclear powers, as well as bitter enemies.

Furthermore, remembering Einstein, both countries’ political life is dominated by religious fascists whose enmity toward each other is profound and long-standing.

India recently wit­nessed a strange spec­ta­cle of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and his cab­i­net col­leagues sub­ject­ing them­selves to an intense scrutiny by the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh or RSS, the Hindu nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion, regard­ing their ‘per­for­mance’ in office.

Modi him­self used to be an activist of the RSS. But an elab­o­rate cha­rade was kept so far that Modi was in com­mand of the government.

The Indian media has since reported that the RSS even­tu­ally gave ‘thumbs up’ to the gov­ern­ment after Modi and his cab­i­net col­leagues trooped in to meet the RSS bosses and tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing on their ‘schemes and achieve­ments’ in the government.

No Indian gov­ern­ment has ever been made to look so fool­ish and diffident.

Why the RSS decided to sub­ject Modi and his cab­i­net to such a dress­ing down pub­licly is anybody’s guess. Per­haps, it was to project the RSS itself as god almighty in the Modi era. But then, it is an open secret that the Hindu fun­da­men­tal­ist groups are call­ing the shots in the gov­ern­ment, pen­e­trat­ing all walks of national life sys­tem­at­i­cally and impos­ing their agenda.

The upshot of the RSS hear­ing is that Modi has blown his ‘cover’, which helped him so far as prime min­is­ter to cre­ate an impres­sion that he is a human­ist and a devout fol­lower of Bud­dhism who viewed with dis­taste the excesses com­mit­ted by the Hindu zealots on the minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties in India such as the attacks on Chris­t­ian churches.

Under the Modi gov­ern­ment, inci­dents of com­mu­nal ten­sion involv­ing Hin­dus and Mus­lims have sharply increased, accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics. How­ever, observers have gen­er­ously absolved the prime min­is­ter him­self of any respon­si­bil­ity in this regard, and are will­ing to sus­pend dis­be­lief. The ‘cover’ has now been blown.

The fall­out of this on the India-Pakistan rela­tion­ship can be seri­ous. Obvi­ously, Modi can no longer main­tain with cred­i­bil­ity his stance that he seeks friendly rela­tions between India and Pakistan.

In fact, fol­low­ing the cross-examination of the gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, the RSS spokes­men in their media brief­ings inter alia brought up the explo­sive doc­trine of ‘Akhand Bharat’ as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple for the Modi gov­ern­ment as regards the India-Pakistan relationship.

Broadly, the RSS’s doc­trine is that the great Par­ti­tion of the sub­con­ti­nent in 1947, which led to the cre­ation of Pak­istan, was an aber­ra­tion that can still be got undone if only India worked toward such an objective.

Pak­istan has always had a lurk­ing sus­pi­cion that there is really no day­light pos­si­ble between Modi and the RSS. What used to be a dark sus­pi­cion is now likely to become an arti­cle of faith. Pakistan’s advi­sor to the prime min­is­ter on national secu­rity Sar­taj Aziz (who is the de facto for­eign min­is­ter) has been quoted as say­ing Wednes­day that in Islamabad’s esti­ma­tion, the Modi gov­ern­ment won the 2014 par­lia­men­tary poll on the basis of ‘anti-Pakistan plat­form’ and has been pur­su­ing the same pol­icy from ‘day one’.

Aziz said, “They (Modi gov­ern­ment) want bet­ter ties, but on their own terms”.

To be sure, the mutual rhetoric makes the prospect of a resump­tion of India-Pakistan dia­logue a remote pos­si­bil­ity. And it should be a safe con­clu­sion that the India-Pakistan nor­mal­iza­tion will remain elu­sive as long as the Modi gov­ern­ment remains in power.

Do the RSS big­wigs and their wards in the gov­ern­ment real­ize what colos­sal dam­age they are caus­ing to India’s national inter­ests? The 31 per­cent vote share Modi man­aged to gar­ner in the poll last year to cre­ate India’s first ever RSS-run gov­ern­ment does not give these peo­ple the right to super­im­pose their sec­tar­ian agenda on the entire nation.

India’s national inter­est lies in cre­at­ing a peace­ful exter­nal envi­ron­ment in the imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood that enables the coun­try to focus on the devel­op­ment chal­lenge through the nar­row cor­ri­dor of time of the next 15–20 years.

Yet, what India is wit­ness­ing is a ratch­et­ing up of ten­sions in the rela­tions with Pak­istan. The past week alone began with India’s army chief Gen­eral Dal­bir Singh shed­ding his fab­u­lous rep­u­ta­tion for being a strong silent sol­dier of dis­cre­tion and reserve – pre­sum­ably, on instruc­tions from the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship – to under­score the readi­ness of the armed forces to wage a ‘swift, short’ war with Pakistan.

It was an incred­i­bly tact­less state­ment to have been made in the present tense cli­mate of bilat­eral ties with Pak­istan. Besides, the bril­liant gen­eral should cer­tainly know that the only way he could ensure that a war with Pak­istan remained ‘swift’ and ‘short’ would be by nuk­ing that coun­try in the dead of the night.

You don’t need a Clause­witz to explain that the ‘kinet­ics’ of war with Pak­istan (nuclear power with big­ger arse­nal than India’s and with second-strike capa­bil­ity) will ulti­mately depend on a vari­ety of fac­tors that are way beyond the con­trol of any­one in New Delhi, civil­ian or military.

Now, it is into this com­bustible mix of rhetoric that the RSS bosses pre­sented their stark reminder to Pak­istan that India has never really rec­on­ciled with the cre­ation of that coun­try in 1947.

…

As for his Indian counterpart’s dire warn­ing, Gen. Sharif was plainly dis­mis­sive: “Armed forces of Pak­istan are fully capa­ble to deal all types of inter­nal and exter­nal threats, may it be con­ven­tional or sub-conventional; whether it is cold start or hot start. We are ready!!”

Are we hear­ing the beat­ing of drum pre­sag­ing the begin­ning of another bloody round of ‘low inten­sity war’ (read vicious cycle of cross-border ter­ror­ism), which cost India heav­ily in human and mate­r­ial trea­sure? Or, could it be that India and Pak­istan are inch­ing toward another full-fledged war? Time only can tell.

Most cer­tainly, peo­ple in respon­si­ble posi­tion should be care­ful about what they say in pub­lic. What Gen. Dal­bir Singh said about ‘short, swift’ war was prob­a­bly fit for a closed-door meet­ing with the Director-General of Mil­i­tary Oper­a­tions at the Army Com­man­ders Con­fer­ence but not as the stuff of grandstanding.

Equally, while the RSS bosses may not be pub­lic offi­cials, they hap­pen to be extra-constitutional author­i­ties wield­ing more power than many erst­while emper­ors in India’s medieval his­tory – and they tend to be taken seri­ously. Sim­ply put, they should know that the notion of ‘Akhand Bharat’ has no place in the 21st cen­tury world order.

India is not pre­sent­ing a con­vinc­ing pic­ture as a respon­si­ble mem­ber of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity when the so-called movers and shak­ers in the coun­try behave like hol­low men.

The point is, India is keen to secure a seat in the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil as a per­ma­nent mem­ber on the plea that it wants to con­tribute to inter­na­tional secu­rity and world peace and devel­op­ment. Fun­nily, yoga, which Modi has begun prop­a­gat­ing under the UN aus­pices for the good of the soul and body of mankind, is itself all about self-control.

And, yet, in its own region, India chooses to pre­oc­cupy itself with sly thoughts about wag­ing a ‘swift short’ war with its unfriendly neigh­bor and har­bors delu­sion­ary notions of doing away with a sov­er­eign inde­pen­dent nation that came into being 68 years ago.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde split per­son­al­ity does not do good to India’s image. The coun­try would have been far bet­ter off if Modi hadn’t blown his ‘cover’ as a human­ist and a modernizer.

…
India’s national inter­est lies in cre­at­ing a peace­ful exter­nal envi­ron­ment in the imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood that enables the coun­try to focus on the devel­op­ment chal­lenge through the nar­row cor­ri­dor of time of the next 15–20 years.

Yet, what India is wit­ness­ing is a ratch­et­ing up of ten­sions in the rela­tions with Pak­istan. The past week alone began with India’s army chief Gen­eral Dal­bir Singh shed­ding his fab­u­lous rep­u­ta­tion for being a strong silent sol­dier of dis­cre­tion and reserve – pre­sum­ably, on instruc­tions from the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship – to under­score the readi­ness of the armed forces to wage a ‘swift, short’ war with Pak­istan.

It was an incred­i­bly tact­less state­ment to have been made in the present tense cli­mate of bilat­eral ties with Pak­istan. Besides, the bril­liant gen­eral should cer­tainly know that the only way he could ensure that a war with Pak­istan remained ‘swift’ and ‘short’ would be by nuk­ing that coun­try in the dead of the night.

You don’t need a Clause­witz to explain that the ‘kinet­ics’ of war with Pak­istan (nuclear power with big­ger arse­nal than India’s and with second-strike capa­bil­ity) will ulti­mately depend on a vari­ety of fac­tors that are way beyond the con­trol of any­one in New Delhi, civil­ian or mil­i­tary.
…